Christine Fair, senior political scientist and a South Asia expert at the RAND Corporation, was careful to say that the identity of the terrorists could not yet be known. But she insisted the style of the attacks and the targets in Mumbai suggested the militants were likely to be Indian Muslims and not linked to Al Qaeda or Lashkar-e-Taiba, another violent South Asian terrorist group.

“There’s absolutely nothing Al Qaeda-like about it,” she said of the attack. “Did you see any suicide bombers? And there are no fingerprints of Lashkar. They don’t do hostage-taking and they don’t do grenades.” By contrast, [Sajjan Gohel, a security expert in London] said “the fingerprints point to an Islamic Al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist group."

38 comments:

You have to read 38 paragraphs in this morning's NY Times before you see the word "Mujahideen" and another few paragraphs before you see references to Islamic terrorists.

And there's nothing new under the sun. John Wilkes Booth's gang also carried out multiple simultaneous strikes, in its case with the purpose of trying to decapitate the US government by killing not only Lincoln, but Johnson, Seward, and Grant, too. (Grant was to have been sitting with Lincoln, but changed his plans at the last minute.)

This reprehensible incident shows the enduring wisdom of Rick Steves' advice to travelers never to stay in luxury hotels. "Stay in local-style places. Terrorists never bomb Pedro's Pension. That's where they sleep."

38 paragraphs in this morning's NY Times before you see the word "Mujahideen"

Nobody's ever heard of this group before. They may not be Muslim at all, rather Hindu or Sikh agents provocateurs trying to spread anti-Muslim hatred.

"Why are we concerned whether it's Al Qaeda or some other bunch of loons?"

From a practical point of view, we should want to know who we're dealing with so we can work toward understanding how to deal with them.

From a political and propaganda point of view, some in the West will want to immediately link all terrorists to Al Qaeda, simply to further justify its own disastrously wrong-headed and criminal responses to an Al Qaeda attack on America. (Thus, while one person asserts the tactics of this group bear little similarity to known Al Qaeda tactics, another asserts that this has "all the hallmarks" of Al Qaeda.)

Yes, this is just another terrible tragedy that ought to be handled with caution. We need to be in mourning and grieve, round this para-military group up, give them a fair trial, 10 years of appeals, years in prison communicating illicitly with their brothers in arms and wait for the next group to do the same after which we can in turn respond with caution, grief, mourning, police action. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Yeah, right — it certainly was disastrously wrong-headed suckering Al Qaeda into making Iraq the central front in their jihadist war against the West — letting them by their hubristic excesses turn Iraqi Sunnis thoroughly against Islamist radicals in general, the Iraqi Sunnis and new Iraqi security forces then assisting American troops in slaughtering thousands and thousands of Al Qaeda's best fighters there, which experience graduated the U.S. armed forces into now being expert at counterinsurgency warfare, after which they and the Iraqis booted Al Qaeda ignominiously out of the country.

It may not have been planned that way, but it certainly was effective.

BTW, this incident simply demonstrates the total irrelevance of the MSM. Headlines should have been "Islamic terrorists strike Mumbai", but an alien visitor reading the NY Slimes would think bombs just blew up by themselves.

When we bought into the liberal value system, which says discrimination is a terrible wrong because it implies that not all peoples and cultures are equal. And muslims keep doing these violent things that are really inconvenient for that value system. As someone said, muslims are nature's way of teaching us that diversity and multiculturalism don't work.

Mark, you put it well -- Muslims are nature's way of telling us that multiculturalism doesn't work.

The idea of tolerance comes finally against the ultimately intolerant, and then what? More tolerance?

That's the left's idea.

The right has other ideas. The funniest idea I've read (not here) is that we should offer the terrorists 73 virgins, but they don't have to leave their huts. They just blow themselves and their families up, and go directly to heaven, without passing go.

muslims are nature's way of teaching us that diversity and multiculturalism don't work.

When did we get this way, that we can't admit who our enemies are?

Kill them and everyone who supports them.

Christians should thus rejoice at the defeat of their Hindu enemies:

INDIAPriest seriously injured in attack against Catholic Church

Mumbai (AsiaNews)  Last Sunday night a gang of armed men attacked a Catholic parish church in the city of Kubbu in the Lohardaga district of eastern Indian State of Jharkhand. Both parish priest and vicar were injured and admitted to hospital with the latter suffering serious knife wounds.

At least 13 people have died in attacks against Christians in the eastern India state of Orissa. Thousands have sought shelter in government camps after a Hindu leader’s murder by apparent Communists provoked mobs of Hindus to burn more than a dozen churches and attack Christians.

30 Hindu fundamentalists attacked a convent, beat two novices, and then fled. Only one of a growing number of Anti-Christian attacks in India.

PBULBANI, ORISSA, India, Aug. 27 (UPI) -- A mob of 300 people attacked a Catholic church Thursday in the town of Raikia in India's eastern Orissa state, smashing statues and burning icons.

The mob broke into the church and smashed statues of angels and the Virgin Mary, as well as glass panes in doors and windows, a police officer told the Press Trust of India.

A truck parked outside the church was set ablaze, he said.

The attackers also carried pictures and garments from the church and set them afire outside, a church leader said.

NEW DELH (ICNS): The Catholic Bishops' Conference of India (CBCI) says the Church “is deeply concerned” about the series of attacks on Christian places of worship allegedly by Hindu extremist groups in various parts of Karnataka on Sunday.

The Bishops of India, representing the Catholic Christian community, “have taken a serious note of the development in Karnataka, as it comes close on heels of the enormous human tragedy caused to the community in Orissa,” said a CBCI statement Sept. 15.

CBCI president Cardinal Varkey Vithayathil has expressed “shock and distress at the unprovoked attacks” on Christian places of worship.

How can one "kill them and everyone who supports them" if one doesn't know who they are? Lacking this basic knowledge, one can't find them to kill them. One can't anticipate their next possible actions without knowing something of their purported goals or grievances. One can't know how large or small is their organization, and thus can't know how many have to be killed to "kill them and all who support them," assuming one can find them to enact one's brilliant plan of wiping them out. One might think one has "killed them and all who support them" and in fact have only killed a fraction of them. Or one might have killed none of them, but instead a cohort of completely innocent people.

Why do we spend money for the FBI to research profiles of criminal psychology when it would be more simple and effective to just "kill them?"

Really, at least try not to be so dim. Reality is not a Hollywood action movie.

How can one "kill them and everyone who supports them" if one doesn't know who they are?

I was responding to your claim that we needed to know who they were before we could "understand" how to deal with them. We already understand what has to be done to the people behind this; we just don't know who they are yet.

Alex said: "When did we get this way, that we can't admit who our enemies are?"

It might have something to do with the advent of females and overt female influence at high levels in government. They're concerned about everyone's feelings. They're the arbiters of what's fair and what isn't. They're always capable of pointing out our past mistakes and that we might commit another. And, with the exception of a few like Maggie Thatcher, they're incapable of taking decisive action action on things of this nature because mistakes might be made, unfairness might result and hurtful events might follow. This includes deciding who our enemy is.

According to the female view, terrorism should be treated like a playground squabble and it will blow over once the participants have had a good talking to....without assigning blame, of course. Sound familiar?

1:20 PM Holmes said... Yes, this is just another terrible tragedy that ought to be handled with caution. We need to be in mourning and grieve, round this para-military group up, give them a fair trial, 10 years of appeals,

That's true! In reality, unlike Hollywood, the terrorists are almost always Muslims!

In reality, and especially in India, this of course is not true. India is a multicultural country with a rich heritage of multicultural terrorism. Gandhi was killed by Hindus. Indira Gandhi was killed by Sikhs. Rajiv Gandhi was killed by a Tamil supporter. The Tamil Tigers--one of the longest lived terrorist organizations in the world--is secular from a primarily Buddhist region.

These attacks, if they were indeed carried out by Muslim extremists (either home-grown or foreign), will no doubt trigger revenge attacks by Hindu extremist groups against completely innocent and peaceful Muslims in India. Of course the Drill Sgt's, AllenS's, and Revenant's of the world will see nothing wrong in that. After all, there is no such thing as a truly innocent Muslim--they are all terrorists.

"Any decent, civilized person watching scenes in Mumbai of extremists shooting indiscriminate machine gun fire and launching grenades into civilians crowds -- deliberately slaughtering innocent people by the dozens -- is going to feel disgust, fury, and a desire for vengeance against the perpetrators, regardless of what precipitated it. The temptation is great even among the most rational to empower authority to do anything and everything -- without limits -- to punish those responsible and prevent repeat occurrences. That's a natural, even understandable, response. And it's the response that the attackers hope to provoke.

It's that temptation to which most Americans -- and our leading media institutions -- succumbed in the wake of 9/11, and it's exactly the reaction that's most self-destructive. As documented by this superb Washington Post Op-Ed today from Dileep Padgaonkar, former editor of the Times of India, the Indian Government -- in response to prior terrorist attacks -- has been employing tactics all-too-familiar to Americans: "terrorism suspects have been picked up at random and denied legal rights"; "allegations of torture by police are routine"; "suspects have been held for years as their court cases have dragged on. Convictions have been few and far between"; Muslims and Hindus are subjected to vastly disparate treatment; and much of the most consequential actions take place in secrecy, shielded from public view, debate or accountability.

As Padgaonkar details, many of these measures, particularly in the wake of new terrorist attacks, are emotionally satisfying, yet they do little other than exacerbate the problem, spawn further extremism and resentment, and massively increase the likelihood of further and more reckless attacks -- thereby fueling this cycle endlessly -- all while degrading the very institutions and values that are ostensibly being defended. The greater one's physical or emotional proximity to the attacks, the greater is the danger that one will seek excessively to empower and submit to government authority and cheer for destructive counter-measures which allow few, if any, limits."

Michaleen Flynn: Gentlemen, if you please. This is a private fight. The Marquis of Queensbury rules will be observed on all occasions. Mind your nose, squire."Red Will" Danaher: The Marquis of Queensbury rules Sean Thornton:Okay with me, Michaleen!(The Quiet Man, 1952)

So many innocent people dead. Let's not blame the terrorists. Lets try to understand their legitimate grievances.

If they catch them, they should be put them on trail, get them the best lawyers, let them get out on a technicality because we did not read them their rights in a foreign country and then they can go out and kill a few more Jews.